A studio of three has a particular shape. Decisions are made over coffee, in a single conversation, with everyone in the room. There is no internal email. There is no all-hands. The shape works. Adding a fourth person changes the shape — and we are deliberate about when we will change it.
We have been actively interviewing for two years. We have made an offer twice, and twice the candidate has gone elsewhere. We were briefly disappointed each time, and on reflection both candidates were right to choose what they chose. We were going to ask them to stop being a junior at a larger firm and become the fourth voice at a small one — that is a serious career move and not for everyone.
The skills we are looking for are not the skills you find in a typical CV. We need someone who has shipped enough that they have made every common engineering mistake. We need someone who can write a paragraph that does not embarrass the studio. We need someone who can sit in a meeting with a CFO and explain why the SPA is not the right answer.
We are not interviewing developers. We are interviewing future partners. The conversation has to feel like a partner conversation. It cannot feel like a job interview. This is hard to set up; most candidates have, very reasonably, been trained to perform in interviews. We are looking for the candidate who refuses to perform.
If you read this and recognise yourself, write to lukas@writecodeweb.com. Tell us what you have shipped, what you have read recently, and what you would change about this article.